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by John Welwood

  Notes

  Introduction

  1 These simple truths are also upheld by neuroscience research See, for example, Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon, A General Theory of Love (New York: Random House, 2000).

  2 “Life is love and love is life” Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That (Durham, N.C.: Acorn Press, 1982, p. 75).

  3 the vital center in the belly I am using the term vital center here to refer to what the Japanese call hara and the Chinese call the lower tan-tien, which is located three or four fingerwidths below the navel, back toward the spine. All Asian systems of yoga regard this area as the body’s center of gravity. Its cultivation is central to all martial arts disciplines, for someone who is not rooted in the vital center is easily knocked over.

  In a larger sense, the vital center could also refer to all three lower chakras, or energy centers in the body: the perineum, or sexual center; the point just below the navel; and the power center at the solar plexus. In this wider sense, the constricting of the vital center creates blockages in the areas of personal power, eros/sex, desire, grounding, emotional balance, and instinctual knowing.

  4 “We must love one another or die” From Auden’s poem, “September 1, 1939.”

  5 political settlements that lack genuine caring and respect for all parties eventually fall apart and lead to new conflicts The heavy-handed reparations required from Germany after World War I, for example, led to the even greater hatred and strife of World War II. The political unification of Yugoslavia did not resolve the old ethnic hatreds operating in Serbia and Kosovo that led to the Kosovo war. And the political settlements attempted thus far between Israel and Palestine have lacked the caring and respect that could end the bloodshed there.

  6 For example, Martin Luther King Jr. Doreen Rappaport, ed., Martin’s Big Words (New York: Hyperion, 2001).

  Similarly, the Dalai Lama has argued that “Love and compassion have been omitted from too many spheres of social interaction for too long. Usually confined to family and home, their practice in public life is considered impractical, even naive. This is tragic.” In The Global Community and the Need for Universal Responsibility. (Somerville, Mass.: Wisdom Publications, 1992).

  7 Then there is “grievance politics” The political division between the left wing and the right wing, and the intense antagonism accompanying it (especially in America), grow out of two opposite ways of responding to the love-wound from childhood. One way that children cope with their helplessness, pain, and powerlessness in families where they are not loved well is through a psychological defense called “identification with the aggressor.” This involves identifying with the punitive parent (usually the father) who is in the position of strength: “If I can be like him, I will be safer.” In this way the child finds a semblance of power in a powerless situation. This is the psychological strategy of those who wind up on the extreme right.

  Thus the right advocates for law and order, national security, tough measures, gun ownership, the privileged position of the wealthy power elite, and patriotism (from the Latin root, pater, father). Since this character structure is built on denying one’s woundedness, right-wingers generally have little sympathy for the downtrodden, often demonizing them as “welfare cheats,” losers, or misfits. For them, America and industrial civilization are the adult world, while those in third-world, underdeveloped countries are seen as irresponsible children who must be kept in line and told what to do. This attitude forms the basis for colonialism, empire building, and totalitarian tendencies that suppress popular dissent.

  This need of people on the right to see themselves as strong and resolute, rather than helpless or weak explains why working people often vote for tough right-wing leaders who actually work against their economic interests. For it is more important to maintain the identification with the strong leader (parent) than to look out for their own interests (as children). This allows them to feel safe, through avoiding having to face their own woundedness and fear. Meanwhile, they have a horror of “bleeding-heart liberals” who sympathize with the wounded and oppressed. Voting for compassionate liberals, even though this might actually improve their economic security, would undermine the whole sense of identity their emotional security rests on.

  Those on the left, on the other hand, usually identify instead with the victimized child, who is at the mercy of the unfair, insensitive, or oppressive parent. Because they acknowledge and feel the pain of their woundedness, they are attracted to an approach based on compassion and social justice. Thus the left advocates for workers’ rights, social safety nets that take care of the poor and downtrodden, and a more fair and humane foreign policy. (My view is in accord with George Lakoff’s model of the strict-parent right versus the nurturant-parent left, but emphasizes the psychological dimension of how these two poles arise out of different strategies for relating to the love-wound.)

  However, a large number of people on the left are so identified with their victim identity that they cannot trust power or anyone in power. This accounts for the strange situation where progressives often shoot themselves in the foot, sabotaging any possibility of holding the reins of power—for example, by refusing to modify their idealistic principles in order to build a broad coalition that could rule, by acting out their pique with the established order in self-indulgent ways that turn the larger populace against them, or by voting for third-party candidates who have no chance of winning, thereby ensuring victory by the right. The rallying cry becomes, “We’ve been wronged and we aren’t going to play with you.”

  Thus the left and the right represent opposite ways of dealing with one and the same wound: not feeling loved, cared for, and respected. And their mutual antagonism and lack of dialogue grow out of the vital threat they represent to one another. The right, representing the authoritarian, punitive parent, terrifies the left, which remains on guard against creeping fascism and police-state incursions on civil rights. The permissiveness of the left in turn terrifies the right, which remains on guard against erosion of rigid moral principles, lack of patriotism, and softness on crime—all of which threaten to undermine the strong-parent stance that provides their sense of security.

  8 “To love is to cast light” Ulrich Baer, ed., The Poet’s Guide to Life: The Wisdom of Rilke (New York: The Modern Library, 2005).

  9 And growing children are held within a family environment At the deepest level, human existence is held, supported, and made possible by the fundamental way that reality works, the basic principles known in the West as Divine Law and in the East as the Way or the Dharma (which literally means “that which holds”). In a culture like ours that no longer recognizes or understands the natural, sacred order of things, it becomes more difficult and rare for families to provide a balanced holding environment that nurtures sanity, confidence, and health. Thus modern culture breeds people lacking an inner core of well-being who find it difficult to love and be loved.

  10 When parents do provide enough of both contact and space All too often modern family life does not provide children with the kind of contact or space they need for their development. Day care, the use of television and computers as babysitting devices, unstable marriages, busyness, and stress all work against the all-important need for secure infant-mother bonding.

  At the same time, the increasing tendency of parents to keep children busy, occupied, and entertained works against the child’s need to spend time in unstructured states of being. As Greenberg and Mitchell describe Winnicott’s viewpoint on this need for space:

  The mother’s nondemanding presence makes the experience of formlessness and comfortable solitude possible, and this capacity becomes a central feature in the development of a stable and personal self. . . . This makes it possible for the infant to experience . . . a state of ‘going-on-being’ out of which . . . spontaneous gestures emerge (Jay R. Greenberg and Stephen A. Mitchell, Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory, Harvard University Press, 1983, p. 193).

  The interrupti
on of “the experience of formlessness and comfortable solitude”—which Winnicott termed impingement—forces children to separate abruptly from the continuity of their “going-on-being.” The child is then

  wrenched from his quiescent state and forced to respond . . . and to mold himself to what is provided for him. The major consequence of prolonged impingement is fragmentation of the infant’s experience. Out of necessity he becomes prematurely and compulsively attuned to the claims of others. . . . He loses touch with his own spontaneous needs and gestures . . . [and develops] a false self on a compliant basis (Ibid).

  Chapter 1: Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships

  11 As Brother David Steindl-Rast describes this David Steindl-Rast, Gratefulness: The Heart of Prayer (Ramsey, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1984).

  12 As one Indian teacher, Swami Prajnanpad Swami Prajnanpad was an unusual and interesting Advaita Vedanta teacher who read Freud in the 1920s and developed his own version of psychotherapy for his students. He is not well known in the West outside of France. He had a small ashram in Bengal and died in 1974. The quotes from him in this book come from letters and transcripts of conversations he had with his French students. Although his work has not been available in English, Hohm Press (Prescott, Arizona) is preparing a book on his teachings by one of his main French students.

  13 “This is the exalted melancholy of our fate” Martin Buber, I and Thou (New York: Scribners, 1958, pp. 16–17).

  14 Yet this also gives rise to one of the most fundamental of all human illusions that the source of happiness and well-being lies outside us I am by no means suggesting that relative human love is dispensable or advocating that we should transcend our need for it. To the contrary, in other books I have argued that the challenges of human relationship provide important stepping-stones for personal and spiritual development. I have also argued against the notion, common in certain circles, of spiritual practice as a way to transcend involvement in the relational play of duality, of I and Thou. See John Welwood, “Double Vision: Duality and Nonduality in Human Experience,” in The Sacred Mirror, John Prendergast, Peter Fenner, and Sheila Krystal, eds. (St. Paul, Minn.: Paragon House, 2003). The attempt to use spiritual ideas and practices to avoid dealing with emotional unfinished business—notably our woundedness around love—usually has disastrous consequences, especially in the West, frequently leading to psychological imbalance and destructive behavior. My term for this kind of dissociation and denial is spiritual bypassing.

  Often we deal with our disconnection from love through one of two extremes: emotional denial—trying to rise above our wounding through worldly achievement or spiritual transcendence (a popular male choice)—or emotional fixation—becoming endlessly preoccupied with relationship as the source of all happiness (a popular female choice). In this book, I am proposing a middle way between these two extremes—through appreciating the relative significance of personal love, while also recognizing that it can never contribute to absolute ease and satisfaction. There can be no doubt that healthy relationships contribute to human happiness. Yet this happiness ultimately arises from our capacity to connect with what is most real and true within us—which a loving relationship can help put us in touch with.

  15 George Orwell once wrote George Orwell, “Reflections on Ghandi,” in Shooting an Elephant (New York: Harcourt, 1984).

  16 Bringing absolute love into human form Bernard Phillips, an early participant in the East-West dialogue in the 1960s, once wrote that “every human being with whom we seek relatedness is a koan, that is to say, an impossibility.” Koans are riddles that students of Zen Buddhism must solve as steps along their spiritual development. Yet these riddles cannot be solved with the conceptual mind. The only true answer comes from a larger intuitive knowing that lies beyond ordinary thought. Nonetheless, the Zen student cannot help trying to think up the answer. He or she brings these conceptual answers to the master again and again, while the master gruffly dismisses these stratagems. Eventually the student becomes so frustrated that his or her mind gives up. And then something more pure can come through the student, from beyond himself or herself.

  So when Bernard Phillips says that every human being is an impossibility, like a koan, he is also suggesting that authentic love arises from an unfathomable place within us, where we are able to let go and let be, free from the mind’s interference. He goes on to say:

  There is no formula for getting along with a human being. No technique will achieve relatedness. I am impossible to get along with; so is each one of you; all our friends are impossible; the members of our families are impossible. How then shall we get along with them? One way is to try to circumvent the difficulties which they pose by applying psychology. This may remove the immediate difficulty, but it will not forge a relationship. In this context we do well to be mindful of the ever-present possibility of gaining the whole world through technique, but losing our souls, that is, our relatedness to reality.

  If you are seeking a real encounter, then you must confront the koan represented by the other person. The koan is an invitation to enter into reality.

  17 In his book, Works of Love Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).

  18 For, as the great Sufi poet Rumi sings From Rumi’s poem “Zero Circle,” translated by Coleman Barks.

  Chapter 2: The Mood of Grievance

  19 While love can exist free of hatred Research in neuropsychology showing a correlation between impaired maternal bonding and inappropriate aggressive behavior also supports this view. See Lewis, Amini, and Lannon, A General Theory of Love, pp. 208–9.

  Chapter 3: Letting Grievance Go

  20 Since it is easy to remember only the times when we think our mother harmed us This contemplation is condensed from a much longer version that appears in Kelsang Gyatso, Joyful Path of Good Fortune (Cumbria, England: Tharpa Publications, 2000, pp. 403–6).

  Chapter 4: From Self-Hatred to Self-Love

  21 This notion of basic goodness I have taken the term basic goodness from the teachings of the Tibetan master Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. This was his translation of a Tibetan term that refers to the native purity and dignity of our being as well as the intrinsic wonder and delight of reality when seen clearly. See Chögyam Trungpa, Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1983).

  22 If Stalin, Hitler, or Osama bin Laden In her books For Your Own Good and Paths of Life, Alice Miller has researched the role of childhood lovelessness and wounding in the lives and development of vicious tyrants. Some relevant quotes from a lecture of hers (“The Childhood Trauma,” delivered in New York City, 1998):

  I can certainly aver that I have never come across persecutors who weren’t themselves victims in their childhood, though most of them don’t know it because their feelings are repressed. The less these criminals know about themselves, the more dangerous they are to society. So I think it is crucial to grasp the difference between the statement, “every victim becomes a persecutor,” which is wrong, and the statement, “every persecutor was a victim in his childhood,” which I consider true.

  For Alois Hitler [Hitler’s father] the suspicion that he might be of Jewish descent [it is likely that Hitler’s grandmother was impregnated by a Jewish employer] was insufferable in the context of the anti-Jewish environment in which he was raised. . . . The only thing he could do with impunity was to take out this rage on his son Adolf. According to the reports of his daughter . . . Alois beat his son mercilessly every day. In an attempt to exorcise his childhood fears, his son nurtured the manic delusion that it was up to him to free not only himself of Jewish blood but also all Germany and later the whole world . . .

  Mao had been regularly whipped by his father and later sent 30 million people to their deaths, but he hardly ever admitted the full extent of the rage he must have felt for his own father, a very severe teacher who had tried through beatings to “make a man” out of his son. Stalin caused millions to suffer and d
ie because even at the height of his power his actions were determined by unconscious, infantile fear of powerlessness. Apparently his father, a poor cobbler from Georgia, attempted to drown his frustration with liquor and whipped his son almost every day. His mother displayed psychotic traits, was completely incapable of defending her son and was usually away from home. . . . Stalin idealized his parents right up to the end of his life and was constantly haunted by the fear of dangers, dangers that had long since ceased to exist but were still present in his deranged mind. His fear didn’t even stop after he had been loved and admired by millions. (“The Childhood Trauma,” New York, 1998)

  Here we can see the mood of unlove at work.

  23 As the German spiritual teacher Rudi Rudrananda, Entering Infinity (Portland, Ore.: Rudra Press, 1994, p. 23).

  24 In Buber’s words Martin Buber, The Way of Man according to the Teaching of Hasidism (Seacacus, N.J.: 1950, pp. 16–17).

  Chapter 5: Holy Longing

  25 plainly wanting or needing something Desire and need are close cousins. Need is a raw and more intense form of desire.

  26 In the words of the Indian teacher Nisargadatta Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That.